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Birth and Death, Part 2
The talk presents birth and death as mutually arising phases within each moment, emphasizing Dōgen’s instruction to face and actualize each without avoidance or attachment. Zazen supports living each moment fully, while practice also entails recognizing the limits of perception and offering the self to the Three Treasures; discussion applies these teachings to pain, burnout, and the experience of time.
Texts and works referenced
- “Shoji” (Dōgen): Frames birth and death as complete phases, each with its own past and future, and calls for facing each as it comes.
- “Genjōkōan” (Dōgen): Connects birth and death with the completion of the present moment.
- “Fukanzazengi” (Dōgen): Cited for describing zazen as the “Dharma gate of repose and bliss.”
- “Zenki” (Dōgen): Informs the discussion of total dynamic activity and the interdependence of each moment and its environment.
- Ikiru (Akira Kurosawa): Watanabe’s response to a terminal diagnosis illustrates awakening expressed through wholehearted service and engagement with the present.
- “The Death of Ivan Ilyich” (Leo Tolstoy): Identified as a loose inspiration for Ikiru; its protagonist’s awakening occurs at the point of death.
- Heart Sutra (author not specified): Referenced in discussing emptiness and the absence of independent self-existence.
- Yogācāra teachings (authors not specified): Used to distinguish accounts of subjective perception from accounts of emptiness.
- Sojin Roshi’s commentary on Dōgen: Provides the account of birth and death arising together, and of zazen as harmonization with universal activity.
- Interview with David Chadwick (interviewee: Kōsan Ogwi): Relates Suzuki Roshi’s teaching that “today is absolutely today,” illustrating the talk’s emphasis on the immediacy of the present.
- “Comparative light and comparative dark” (Sojin Roshi): Supports the discussion of birth and death as mutually defining rather than separable opposites.
- “Throw yourself into the house of Buddha” (source not specified): Invoked to describe offering the self to the Three Treasures.
AI Suggested Title: Birth and Death in Every Moment
Good morning. Can you hear me okay? Yes, good. Today is the 20th of December. Looks like a beautiful, clear, crisp day in Berkeley. Just on the cusp of the winter solstice. I haven't been outside yet, but hopefully I'll be able to at least touch base with the day. Someone suggested yesterday, and I followed up with a couple of people, that usually at the end of Sechin, at the end of Rohatsu Sechin, we would have Shosan. And I thought about it, and... checking around and checking internally, it seems like that's a good idea.
[01:05]
So, tomorrow, we'll close Sushin with Shosan. I think most of you know what Shosan is. Shosan is a Dharma question and answer between the teacher and individual students. And it's a wonderful... exchange that takes place in public. Many of you have been to Shosan in Sishin, and also many of you have been to Sojin Roshi's gatherings on Thursday nights, which are really a version of Shosan. Shosan is more of a ritual, but I think we're going to scale back some of the ritual dimensions of it because they don't translate well onto Zoom. But we'll have the essence of it, just where we can meet.
[02:13]
So I'd like to encourage you from your experience in Sashin and from what we've been talking about the last couple days, please bring a question. I think it's really helpful if the question is a practice question, not an intellectual question. Though sometimes it's a little hard to distinguish, for some of us, distinguish between the two. But keep it brief without a lot of framing or preamble to the question. And my response is, I think this is the spirit of Joseon, my response is to you. You know, it's not to some abstract principle.
[03:18]
It's to the person that I'm speaking to, and your question can be to me. And I think almost all of us know each other so that it's a very intimate exchange. And so that's my basic instruction to you. I'm not going to get into a lot of detail. So please either think of a question or bring yourself to that moment and take a breath. and see what question arises. So what I was thinking actually, because I don't want to kind of curtail any of our precious zazen time, I'm thinking that instead of doing a lecture tomorrow, we'll do zazen through the morning and then close with the shosun.
[04:30]
And, you know, I think that that seems I just don't want to cut into it anymore. It's really I'm really enjoying Zazen. I hope you are. And I'm enjoying sitting with everyone. There's so many good friends and old friends on the kind of among the participants. So. I want to read something from this lecture by Sojin. I'm sort of moving between these lectures. And I think that today's talk is essentially going to be about time. The time of our birth, the time of our death,
[05:34]
the time of our life and how we perceive it. So today, as I said, today is the cusp of the winter solstice. Solstice is a word that derives from two Latin words, sol, or the sun, and sistere, to stand still. And it means that the sun's angle appears to stand still, and at that moment of the solstice, which is actually at 2.02 a.m., coming morning, so 16 hours from now, the apparent motion of the sun in relation to the Earth reverses.
[06:46]
So, the winter solstice is in the northern hemisphere, it's the shortest day of the year. In the southern hemisphere, it's the longest day of the year, that is above and below the equator. And we also have, you know, the vernal and autumnal equinox, which means spring and fall, in which the sun falls. The angle is exactly on the equator, and so the days and nights are of equal duration. So, you could say and I'm getting in trouble here, that we are experiencing, we're close to the death of autumn and the birth of winter.
[07:53]
Now, in Shoji, Dogen writes, birth is a phase that is an entire period of itself with its own past and future. Death is a phase with an entire period of itself with its own past and future. And then he says, accordingly, when birth comes, face and actualize birth. And when death comes, face and actualize death. Do not avoid or desire them. And this is resonance with something we might remember from Genjo Koan, another philosophical work of Dogen's.
[09:01]
He says, birth is an expression, complete this moment. Death is an expression, complete this moment. complete this moment. They are like winter and spring. You do not call winter the beginning of spring, nor summer the end of spring. Well, some of us do. And that relates to the nature of time. The seasons follow each other. But here Dogen is talking about moment by moment time. So I want to read you. So here's one perspective from Sojin's commentary.
[10:07]
Within each moment's activity of birth is also death. Birth and death are happening at the same time and in each moment. The birth of something is also the death of something. And the death of something is the birth of something. Otherwise, continuation couldn't happen. Emptiness, in this sense, means the space in which something can happen. So I would say emptiness is, one can see it as potentiality. The space in which something can happen is called our life. And within our life, there is a constant
[11:12]
appearance of birth and death. So he says, birth of something is also death of something, and the death of something is the birth of something. Otherwise, continuation couldn't happen. Without emptiness, everything would freeze as it is. Or maybe without emptiness, everything would sort of pile up into an unimaginable mass and everything would get in each other's way. In the same way, if you look at birth and death in that light, death is necessary for birth or manifestation. If there was no death, there couldn't be any manifestation and vice versa. If there was no manifestation, there couldn't be any death.
[12:14]
And here, I think, so it gets to the heart of the matter. So Zinki means to live and love each moment in its full function right now. not clinging to existence, not wishing for death. Otherwise, we have a one-sided understanding of existence that is called an upside-down view. He said, when I studied this with Kadigiri Roshi years ago, he had a picture of a little man in a circle upside-down. Zenki means to live and to love.
[13:22]
In a commentary that I found by Shoaku Okamura, he's talking about the fascicle shoji, which would translate his birth to death. The Japanese word show as a verb means to live, ikiru, and also to be born. Shoji is the process of life, of our life in which we are born, live, and die. So this evocation of ikiru, to live, brings to mind the wonderful movie by Akira Kurosawa, which is called Ikiru.
[14:31]
I wonder if any of you have seen that. Let's see. I can't see everybody. By reputation, this was Suzuki Roshi's favorite movie. And it's... It's certainly among my favorites. It's incredibly moving. So the story of Akiru is about a civil servant who's kind of a cipher. He spends his life doing his work, and the first scene, you can't even see him because he's hidden behind huge stack of papers that he has to clear away for anyone to see him. And he has a doctor's appointment. He goes to the appointment and finds out that he has received a very bad cancer diagnosis and has only a short time to live.
[15:44]
And he walks out in a daze and with the sense that he has a short time to live and he hasn't lived. He's done all of, he's done his job, he has a couple of pretty ungrateful kids and a very difficult relationship with his wife. He doesn't care about anything and There is something really deep. The meaning of his life is missing completely. And he keeps looking for it. He looks for it religiously. He looks for it. There's a great sequence where this gentleman, Mr. Watanabe, goes to night town. He goes to the nightclub districts.
[16:47]
And he, you know, he indulges all of the senses for a while and, you know, gets drunk and goes to prostitutes and does all this stuff. And it's just meaningless. And one day as he's walking home, he passes a, well, He has a scene with a young woman that he thinks he's in love with in a cafe. And he sees he gets the idea of serving children. And so he has a kind of awakening experience in that moment. And then as he's walking home, he sees this polluted area near his house, and he envisions making a playground.
[17:56]
And he pours everything he has, every ounce of his strength, into fighting the system, into getting the permits, into raising the money, into building this playground for kids, and then it opens. and the kids are playing. And in the last scene of the first part, he is in his, he's walking home at night, and he stops in the playground, and he gets on one of the swings, and he starts happily swinging, and he dies. completely happy. Then the second half of the movie is all of the people who had been or were supposed to have been close to him at his funeral speculating on what happened.
[19:10]
What happened to this guy? Because he changed. So this is Ikiru, to live. He lived. And it's interesting that the criticism says that it's loosely based on the story I told you about yesterday by Tolstoy, the death of Ivan Illich. Ivan Illich has his awaiting experience in the last moment of his death. Watanabe, has this awakening experience some months earlier so that he can really serve. So this, to me, is exactly what Zojin Roshi is speaking of. When he says, so Zenki means, Zenki, total dynamic means to live and love each moment in its full function.
[20:29]
To love each moment means to love each being. And to love each moment means to settle in today. The Sojan Roshi says, when we sit, our body, mind and breath are harmonized with universal rhythm. The universal rhythm is birth and death. There's no separation. We realize that our whole body and mind is simply universal activity. We don't control the way the blood runs through our body. We didn't control the way we were born or manifested in the world. We may have been kicking and screaming, but that is beyond our control.
[21:35]
And we don't control the aging process, even though we may try. And we don't control the dying process. It is simply the universe doing its thing. We say, I am breathing, but it's just an idea we have. We are actually being breathed by the universe itself. There is nothing we can do about that even though we try. We try to shape everything in a certain way. As he says, that's because We are under the impression that I'm under the impression that I am the center of the universe. You are under the impression that you are the center of the universe. And you know what? We're both right and we're both wrong. But we try to shape everything in a certain way, but it is simply the flow of the way things go.
[22:44]
If we say there is no self, there's some truth to that. If we say there is self, there's some truth to that too. This is where people get stuck. They hear that there shouldn't be an ego self and they try to shake it off. How do I get rid of my ego self? But the self is necessary. We just offer it to the three treasures. So this is, to me, this is the same as throw yourself into the house of Buddha. Just offer yourself to the Buddhas and then the Buddhas will use you as they wisely see fit. but we have to make this offer and we have to offer it to the three treasures.
[23:50]
So this says there is no inherent self. There's simply the self of the universe. Each one of us is a manifestation of the universal self. As Yasutani Roshi once said, we all belong to the same no soul society. We all belong to the same nose hole society. Here we are breathing the same air, eating the same food, and being deluded about the same delusions and agreeing on them. That's the end of that lecture. It's a great place for him to end. Breathing the same air, eating the same food, and being deluded about the same delusion and then read on them. I could end there, but I think I found another story, which I had never seen before.
[25:13]
And I just, you know, this may be a little, jumping around, but I think I'll trust you to make the connection. I was looking to see if there was some place where some citation that Ikeda was Suzuki Roshi's favorite movie. I know that I'd read it someplace. I don't know where. And I was looking online and I found this section where it's mentioned by Reverend Ogwi. Reverend Kosan Ogwi was in San Francisco. He is a Jodo Shinshu minister. And I was talking about the Jodo Shinshu school yesterday as well. And he was in Cleveland and then he was in Chicago.
[26:14]
And before that, he had been a young man. a minister in San Francisco. And when he came to the ministry, he was really just completely lost. He didn't know what he was supposed to be doing. And he went to Suzuki Roshi. This is in probably the late 50s, early 60s. And they became very close friends. And Reverend Ogwi has spoken about Suzuki Roshi. He's a wonderful exemplar of that kind of ordinary mind that I was speaking of. But in an interview with David Chadwick, he tells the story. Suzuki Roshi often gave a talk to his English-speaking students, and I would sometimes go. This was at Sakoji on Bush Street. One time he was speaking to us.
[27:15]
One time when he was speaking to us, something stuck that made my ministerial life change so that I wish to continue. He would use a little Japanese along with English to help him think, I guess. He started talking and walking in front of people, this is in the Zendo, back and forth, slowly and steadily. And he said, today. Today, wajana. Today, wajana. Today, wa is a subject, and jana is like is with emphasis. Today, izu yapari, today. Today is today. Izu is pronounced just as, is just is. pronounced in a Japanese way, your party means absolutely.
[28:20]
Today is absolutely today. Then he walked again slowly and steadily in front of us. And he said, today, izunatu, tomorrow. Today is, I'm sorry, today, izunatu, yesterday. Today is not yesterday. And then he said, he would walk slowly and speaking in that way, he said, today is not tomorrow. Then he walked in front of one of the people sitting in the front seat and he grabbed his neck and shook him and said to him, do you understand? I was kind of surprised at what he was doing. Then he smiled with all his heart and said, today is absolutely today, not yesterday and not tomorrow.
[29:31]
And he smiled again and said, that's all. I couldn't even stand up. I was shocked. That is the compressed version of Shoji. Today is absolutely today, not yesterday, and not tomorrow. So I'm going to stop there and leave time for some questioning. I'm leaving you to make the connections here. You know, I worry a little that this is philosophical or abstract, but it's not. It's about our very existence. And we get to do it. We actually get to do it all the time. But.
[30:34]
We're working on it in session and we're working on it together. So we're not alone with it. And that allows us to, that allows the love to flow. So I'm going to stop and let Ika manage the Q&A. Thank you, Hozan. So as we all know and are used to by now, you can raise your blue hand in the participants window. And maybe today I'll be actually able to see those hands. If not, HACO will take the questions. I'm able to see that hand of HACOs. So we'll start with HACO. Please unmute yourselves. Thank you, Hozan, and thank you for leaving it us to make the connections.
[31:42]
There are a lot of dots that when I was a kid, I loved to do it, and it seemed easy. Yesterday, we were talking, you talked about Zenke, and in your class about Zenke, about the boat and in the world of the boat. Today, during your talk at one point, you said, we love all beings. And I recognize that within the, from Zenke, I got the idea of a response field. Here I am, a boat in the middle of a world that is known to the boat and knows the boat as the boat. But beyond that, it's outside the response field. So this term response field is my own. When I love all beings, I love those within my response field. Those who are touching me and who are present in this absolutely today, which is why I get to the question, absolutely here, absolutely now, my response field is, like the boat, limited.
[32:51]
Yet it is not limited in the sense of being with or in the presence of doing with everything within my response field. I wonder if you could discuss that a little bit or how that strikes you. How that strikes me is that what you're calling response field, as I understand that, I'm not quite sure because it's your term. To me, it's... When you ride in a boat, your body and mind and the environs together are the undivided activity of the boat.
[33:54]
The entire earth and entire sky are both the undivided activity of the boat. So what this means to me is that your response field is your perception. Our perceptions are limited. environment of the boat is universal. The environment of ourself is universal even though we don't see it. The whole thrust of these fascicles is actually to help us see the vast scale of our universal reality. This is, you know, what I was saying yesterday, I found it.
[34:59]
In response to What Yoni was asking about the cells in his body, when I responded, the whole earth is our true human body. That's our true response field, but we're limited. We have limited capacities. So that's what I would say to that. And you can never see everything. You know, this is one of the things I've been thinking about, you know, this kind of idealization of mindfulness that we have these days.
[36:02]
My feeling is mindfulness is putting your attention on one thing, on one discontinuous moment of time in place. And that is really important to be able to do. But when you put your attention in one place, you have to realize that there's other places that you are not putting your attention. So, we can't, you know, accept a very rare moment when we feel we may experience total openness. Even that, I question whether it's total. It's just really wide. So we have to keep remembering that there's more than us at the center of the universe. I think I'll stop there. Thank you.
[37:08]
Janae, please unmute yourself. Hasan Sensei. Yes. In Ikiru, Mr. Watanabe has an awakening and has a mission then to serve children and build this playground. And he does that, it sounds to me... He does that in a similar way to us sitting zazen, without any gaining idea. This is something he's compelled to do. And however, once he does it, he then steps in to that playground and onto the swing and becomes a child. in activity and really realizes his life.
[38:12]
Yeah, that's it. What's the question? Is there a question? It was just to comment on that. We need to ask you to comment if that was how it seemed to you or... Yeah, I think that's really good that he... He doesn't just build this thing and stand up, stand back and watch it. He gets on the swing and swings. The child is... There was no child left in the guy who had the cancer diagnosis. But by the time he dies, that child is alive. Right, right. That's so wonderful. It's really wonderful. I really... You know, if anyone... I have a copy of the movie on DVD. If anyone has a DVD player anymore, I'm happy to lend it to you.
[39:15]
I'm sure you can find it online. I'm pretty sure it's in the Criterion Collection. It's just, it's so beautiful. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Gisu, will you unmute yourself and ask your question? Yes. It's not a question. It's a comment. And, yeah, I think that the world of Krussovo and Tolstoy, I mean, he was inspired by Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. And I think that world, W-O-R-L-D, is over. We are living in a totally different world, like technological world, which is kind of like, you know, everything is... And also, like, we are feeling it so much right now. It doesn't mean that it started a long time ago, but that is kind of like this. But anyway, my thing is, like, with all the respects that I have, I'm not trying to disrespect anyone.
[40:21]
But I'm just trying to, you know, as a freedom of expression or freedom of speech, you know, I'm just trying to say my, give my comment, and I don't expect you to give me any answer or anything. is just, I think what you're saying is a spiritual propaganda. I think is what you're saying is slogans. I heard a lot of slogans since I entered this in a lot of speeches. Sometimes I heard something that is, you know, I kind of like feel like it's maybe, it's just kind of like, but it's because we are, right now we are in totally different world and it's not anymore their world. That's why we need another way of talking, I think. We need another way of communicating about these things. And not just keep saying about this. Yeah, I think that's all I want to say. And as I said, it's a comment. It's not a question or anything.
[41:23]
Okay, thank you. Thank you. Well, I take the comment and I will think about it. Irrespective of whether I fully agree or not, I respect your thoughtfulness and will think about it. So, thank you. Next, we have Heather Serrantes. Morning, Hazan. Hi. I'm still thinking about the comment that was just made, but I actually have a question. I love this quote, today is absolutely today, not yesterday, not tomorrow. And sort of the aliveness of some of these quotes that you've been giving us.
[42:29]
And I feel like I was really connected to that way of moving through the world at an earlier point in my life. And I think like many people, there's a question of burnout for me, just pure burnout that makes me disconnected from this feeling. And in the... And in the experience of COVID, it's even more so because I'm already burned out and now I'm teaching my 10-year-old how to get through fifth grade. And so I would just love maybe a pep talk where, you know, a morning of Zazen or some... something that shifts it up to keep the lens fresh is good and maybe gets me through like 10 in the morning but by 10 30 i'm burned out again and keeping that sort of ongoing connection to that feeling of aliveness i just wonder if you have any words of encouragement
[43:47]
Well, it's easier for me to see your aliveness. It may not be so easy for you to see it always. But this is where we look to our friends and our family to reflect it back to us in the moments when we may not be able to see it ourselves. And just I think that There are moments, certainly are moments of a lot of darkness and difficulty that I experience. And I look at those, and also I look at it, as I said, I try to see that by reflection from others, but also... I am wary of my propensity to boil everything down to an absolute in any given moment.
[45:06]
And so to recognize the mechanism, recognize the fluidity that exists not just within the moment, but within what I call myself. And look for that in yourself. you know, and appreciate it. Linda Hess. Morning. Well, I have just a teeny response to what Heather just said and then my question. I've been getting some help from Reb Anderson lately, and he would say, if I said that to him, he might say, don't try to get rid of your burnout. Befriend it. Anyway, even though that's hard to do, I found it helpful.
[46:17]
Well, I think that your burnout, just to say your burnout, there's information and a message there. And we need to figure out what it is actually saying to us to bring ourselves back into balance. Yeah. It's just another like aspect of what you're saying. Um, at the beginning, when you started talking this morning, you said, I'm enjoying Zazen and I hope you are too, but I'm not enjoying it. Um, and, uh, but I enjoy how I feel when I get up. Um, But when I'm sitting there, I really try to get out of it and stuff like that. So you have any help on enjoying myself? Like, I can't decide to enjoy it, can I? Nope. Well, it's kind of... I mean, you know, in Gensho, in Fukunsa Zengi, there's this line...
[47:26]
The Zazanam speaking of is not learning meditation. It's simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss. And I think I spent 15 years thinking, okay, I'm ready. When does this repose and bliss happen? And one day I found it sneaking in. And it's not always like that. I mean, I am enjoying it. I'm really enjoying it today. today or this week, and there are mornings when I get up when, you know, I just feel like I'm ready to jump out of my skin, but I just do it because that's my vow. But, you know, I can't tell you, I don't know how you enjoy it. You just let that arise when it arises, but it's ready to rise, it will arise. I don't know. I don't have any good advice, and I'm not, and I'm not you know I'm not a Pollyanna, and I'm not somebody who believes, I think I have a much, a more kind of, what can I say?
[48:40]
Sojin has a very different attitude, I think, or somewhat different attitude than I do. I don't think it's necessarily going to fix everything in my life, but if I look in the long run, I see how much of my life has changed in the years that I've sat. And so that may not be the same as enjoying a given period of zazen, but it is definitely some solace. So I don't know. So I get it. You say, I hope you're enjoying it too. And I say, I'm not. See you later. Well, no, not see you later. No, I'm not enjoying it right this second.
[49:40]
And see you later. I'll see you. We're sticking together here. Oh, okay. That's what I, yeah. When you say see you later, it sounded like, and I'm going to go away. Don't go away. Okay. Okay, bye. Thank you. Don't go anywhere. Okay. There are three more questions, but I have a... Okay, that's it. I guess it's a comment, or it's just I'm excited because of the subject that came up, because yesterday during Zazen, I had this experience where I was having a good amount of pain in the knees, and it's not something that I'm unfamiliar with, and so I was just going to the breath, deep breathing. And there was somehow, I wasn't trying to do this, but somehow I brought, because when one is in pain, time seems to drag on, there was something about it that I was able to enjoy the spaciousness of that time dragging on while the pain was still there.
[50:49]
And I was really grateful for that. I was trying to make it happen today. Like you say, you can't make it happen. but how can I make that happen again? You're learning. I don't know how one does anything because this comes back to the question that we addressed yesterday of this, you know, the illusion of self-power and other power. So, I think... I'm surprised at the extent to which I find myself, I discover the other power side of me. And I think it's useful. You know, you can't make yourself enjoy zazen, as Linda was asking. You can't, you know, you can't necessarily
[51:55]
find the spaciousness and pain. And I want to say that there are times I don't idealize that either. There are, you know, and in this respect, I'm not trying to I'm not trying to sell spiritual propaganda. There are times when pain just flicks you off into something deep and scary and unavoidable. And it's not like every pain can be mastered by Zazen. But where you can allow an opening, good, do it. Where you can see the spaciousness, then I feel like that is how we train ourselves to see that that's one of the potentialities.
[52:59]
And it's like we just train little by little. Thank you. That's really helpful. It helps me to relax when you say that, because my tendency is, well, if I've had that wonderful experience of enjoying the two realms at the same time, I want to do that 100% of the time, which, of course, is impossible and not to be grasped after. So thank you. Well, one of the things that I heard, I remember reading an article about Mother Teresa and that reportedly she had an experience early in her life where God spoke to her and you know, really gave her her calling. And that she had, as priests do, they all have spiritual advisors, spiritual counselors that they speak with.
[54:13]
She spent the rest of her life waiting for God to speak to her again. Hmm. And it didn't happen. So I think we have to be grateful for what we've been given. Thank you. Next we had Susan Marvin. Did you still have a question, Susan? If not, then we can skip to Kabir. No, I do. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. I took my hand down because of the time. You have time? It's 11. Well, two comments. I remember Sojin once saying about kind of what you're describing, Kiko.
[55:19]
Well, you've got a peak. And maybe that's what, Hozon, you were saying about Mother Teresa. You bought it if it was a peak. It wasn't just a peak. For her, it was a clear voice. But those things can happen big, they can happen small, or not. Right. And the other thing I wanted to say was, it seems like... everything you're talking about points towards like our perspective. Would you say that because of our limited perspective, we don't see birth and death as the same thing? Yes. Yes. I mean, I don't want to go on a tangent about...
[56:22]
perception, but it's sort of the heart of what Lori and I have been thinking and studying and talking about for the last 10 months. Yeah, and to me it seems like, so our, you know, our task then in our training is to, and I guess that's what we're doing, remind ourselves of that. I mean, for me this came up the other day, you know, I'm always building compost piles and I was looking at the new one that I had just built. And, you know, you put all this dead material in the compost pile as you're building it. Everything's dead. And within days, it's just teeming with life. There's just all this life in there going at it. And I was looking at it thinking... You can't say it's dead and you can't say it's alive. And I don't mean that to sound trite, but it's just teeming with life and death.
[57:23]
And it's very exciting. And yet, in our lives with people, our perspective is that death is something bad. And yet, in that cycle of making compost, it's... They're both feeding each other, and you can't have one without the other. And there's nothing bad about it, actually. So my comment is that as you talk about that, I think our job is really to remind ourselves or develop the imagery, or maybe you have a comment about that. I do. And, you know, I try to make it brief. This is what this also came up yesterday when we were talking. I was reading from Sojin's commentary about comparative light and comparative dark.
[58:31]
That everything is light is in comparison to some element of darkness. Dark is comparative to some element of light. Life or birth. is this is where birth includes death and death includes birth. You put a bunch of stuff you think you say conventionally you would say is dead. Actually, it's full of life. If it wasn't full of life in its own form, it couldn't give birth to the compost party. And so this is what Dogen is getting at is actually both sides, as usual, that thinking about one school of Buddhist philosophy, the Mahjama school or the emptiness school, right? The emptiness school, you know, which is the Heart Sutra.
[59:33]
And it's saying that that's a description of the way the universe is. Empty of self... being, that everything is composed of something else. And so, that's the empty school. The other philosophical school, the Yogacara school, which is what we've been studying, is not about the nature of the universe, but it's about our subjective perception of the universe. It's how we see it. So, there's emptiness and then there's how we see the world, which brings forth another, those are just different ways of thinking and perceiving. So they don't exclude each other. They're just different angles, like, you know, light is a wave, light is a particle. So I think that's, I hope that's okay.
[60:38]
Thank you, of course. Thank you very much. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.
[60:42]
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